Public Bitcoin miners are committing billions of dollars to artificial intelligence and high-performance computing infrastructure, but the revenue those investments generate has barely registered compared to the capital flowing out, according to new data from BlocksBridge Consulting.
The numbers behind the gap
In its latest Miner Weekly newsletter, BlocksBridge reported that a combined group of 15 Bitcoin miners and AI data-centre companies spent $30.7 billion on capital assets across their most recent 2026 reporting periods. That figure already exceeds the $21.53 billion the same group spent across all of 2025, a jump of 42.6%.
Narrowing the lens to nine comparable Bitcoin miners, the disparity becomes stark. Those companies deployed $5.11 billion in capital expenditures during the first half of 2026 while generating just $341.2 million in directly reported AI and HPC revenue, producing a capex-to-revenue ratio of roughly 15-to-1.
BlocksBridge calculated capital spending using cash purchases and allocations to hardware, property, equipment and other productive assets, net of proceeds and refunds from asset sales.
AI revenue accelerating, but from a low base
Despite the lopsided ratio, AI and HPC revenue is growing quickly. The same nine miners produced $205.8 million from those operations in the second quarter of 2026 alone, up 52% quarter-on-quarter. Core Scientific, TeraWulf and Bitdeer were among the companies reporting gains during the period.
The steep cost of pivoting to AI
AI and data centres have been positioned as a diversification lifeline for miners squeezed by challenging conditions in the Bitcoin mining sector, but BlocksBridge cautioned that the transition demands far more than existing infrastructure can provide.
‘Power contracts and available land may give miners a starting advantage, but converting those assets into AI-ready capacity requires substations, buildings, cooling systems, networking equipment and, in some business models, GPUs,’ BlocksBridge said.
Bitcoin price provides some relief
Bitcoin surged more than 13% in the week to August 20, climbing back above $72,000 after the US Treasury announced it would at least double the maximum size of its long-term bond buybacks to $4 billion per operation. The move was aimed at improving liquidity in the Treasury market and initially pushed yields lower while lifting risk appetite.
Whether that recovery translates into relief for companies still running large-scale Bitcoin operations remains to be seen.
CoinShares broadens its miner ETF universe
In a sign of how far the mining sector has shifted toward AI and HPC, CoinShares announced a strategy change for its industry-tracking exchange-traded fund. Now rebranded as the CoinShares Bitcoin Mining and Digital Power ETF under the ticker WGMI, the fund holds $222.4 million in assets under management and encompasses 29 holdings drawn from Bitcoin miners, data centre operators, AI semiconductors, power generation firms and HPC companies. CoinShares describes the universe as ‘the businesses powering the digital economy.’
